This game has some very appealing points to it

mmer sticker in the dotted box, and it just peels off and plays a "no" sound, and now I've lost my jackhammer sticker and I'm gonna have to go back to the thing-seller guy to buy another jackhammer for whatever puzzle later on eventually needs it (or I can just quit the game and restart). I'd be okay with the hints for which things you need for which puzzles being a bit obtuse if you weren't punished so much for using the wrong one.

You are purposely leaving out the fact that you can carry things in your inventory before stickerizing them and that you can (quite quickly) go back to old levels to get the things from the level you found them in.

Sticker Star is not an RPG, it's an adventure game. That means it's based around puzzles that consist of "Figure out which item to use on this puzzle, based sometimes on logic." But in an adventure game, you can at least save right before a puzzle to figure it out through trial and error.

Sticker Star is certainly more forgiving than a Sierra adventure, with no ways to make the game unwinnable and no death for using wrong items, but at the same time, it's also less forgiving in some ways, at a meta level, because of the autosave. If there were no autosave, I could do this:

1) Get to a puzzle.2) Have an idea for a possible solution to the puzzle with the things in my inventory.3) Save my game.4) Go to the thing-slinging stall and sling the thing I think I need to use.5) Go back to the puzzle and try the thing sticker I just slung.6) Find out that it doesn't work.7) Load my save from step 3 and try a different thing.

But with the autosave, I can't do that. The game saved when I left Decalburg after making the thing sticker, between steps 4 and 5. So I can either keep going, possibly having to go back and buy the thing again from the thing-seller guy, or I can reload the autosave, and now I've got a thing sticker I don't need taking up space in my album.

It's not brutally unforgiving like a Sierra adventure game, it's just unnecessarily tedious. And I'm getting too damn old to waste time on that.

klecser posted...

The game does not "discourage" you from experimentation. That experimentation just takes time. If your goal in playing a game is to rush to completion, this game isn't for you. But don't claim that the game "discourages" experimentation, simply because you don't want to take the ten extra minutes to find a sticker again.

Haha. My goal in Paper Mario games has never been to "rush to completion." My normal method of playing a Paper Mario game is to Tattle every enemy, every character, and every location, and then construct a timeline of everything and everybody and all the events and backstory in the game, but oops guess I can't do that now.

Sinfullyvannila posted...

I disagree, because of this point from the interview:

For some reason, Miyamoto imposed his decidedly non-RPG non-story vision onto a game that is supposed to be a story-based RPG. (http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2012/11/interview_the_team_behind_paper_mario_sticker_star ) If we're going to take the story out of Paper Mario, it completely defeats the purpose of having Paper Mario.

The Paper Mario series started when we introduced RPG elements as a means of differentiating the game from the platformer series. Through the inclusion of this story and the characters we wrote to fit that story, we ended up giving the game a unique character. However, for Sticker Star, Mr Miyamoto asked us to create a game using only characters already found in the Mario world rather and not any of our own. So instead of focusing our attention on the storyor characters we focused instead on paper. We tried to add as many creative uses of paper as we could to the game. The theme of the game is stickers and we also put a lot of effort into this (including paperisation). Creating a world and story using only Mario characters meant for example we had to give each Toad a distinctive character even if they looked the same. So it was quite a challenge but I feel that we succeeded in overcoming it.---Polite conversation should never include Politics, Religion or what constitutes an RPG.

The thing is, it's not really that this is a different Magikoopa -- it's that Miyamoto is imposing his Muppet-like lack of any semblance of continuity onto Paper Mario. In Miyamoto's mindset, Magikoopa is a character, not a species.

This is the first handheld Paper Mario game. It shouldn't HAVE continuity. Think of it as Paper Mario Land if it makes you feel better.

It's a Paper Mario game. It should have story and characters.

There are no named characters in the game. Think about it -- the only two NPCs anyone remembers are a Wiggler, named Wiggler, and a Snifit, named Snifit. That is not Paper Mario. That is Super Mario Bros.

In the platformers, enemy types are treated as characters, not species -- Goomba, Birdo, the Hammer Bros., Boom Boom, Pom Pom. Same with Yoshi and Toad.

Continuity isn't quite the best word here -- though PM and TTYD certainly did make a bit of an effort to make it seem like they took place in the same world. And to be fair, there's a tiny bit of that in here too, with a discarded research paper by Goombella in the dump in world 5. Funny how that dump is so filled with all the interesting little world-building cruft that would normally fill out every corner of a PM game. I wonder if that was an intentional statement by IS staffers (or localization people) who were unhappy with Miyamoto pushing all that stuff out.

But anyway, the point here is that Miyamoto does not want Mario looking like a coherent world. He wants it to be a stageplay put on by a troupe of actors (note the art direction of SMB3). Look back at the old manuals: "Hammer Brother" is not a species; there are two twin brothers known as the Hammer Bros., who play the role of antagonists on multiple levels. Yoshi is a friendly dinosaur who plays the role of helper on multiple levels. In Miyamoto's mind, the world of Mario does not keep going when the curtain goes down.

That was always the real fundamental difference between Paper Mario and the main platformer series. The platformers are simple plays put on by characters -- Mario will play the hero, Yoshi will play the helper, Peach will play the damsel, Goomba will play the silly, easily defeated enemy -- and then when it's all over, the lights fade out, and that's the end of the whole thing. And then later there will be another, completely unconnected game.

In Paper Mario games, Mario and Bowser and Peach and whole societies of Goombas, Koopas, Toads, and many other species, in multiple countries, all live in one big world. Instead of "Goomba" and "Koopa" being two characters alongside Mario and Peach, they are races, and you have Goombario the Goomba and Kooper the Koopa meeting Mario the Human.

I fully recognize and appreciate that Miyamoto does not see Mario that way. Miyamoto's vision works great for platformers. But until recently, there was also room for those of us who want to imagine Mario's world still going on when we're not looking. That was always the role the Mario RPGs filled, and with Sticker Star, it looks like Miyamoto is trying to stamp that out.

I do have room for hope, though. Maybe this game was never meant for us, the Paper Mario fans. Maybe it's for the ones who have never known a Mario RPG before -- maybe they've only ever played New Super Mario Bros. Maybe it's meant to be a gateway drug for them, and then there'll be an actual Paper Mario game for the Wii U, and it'll sell both to the hardcore PM fans and to the NSMB-playing masses, giving it big enough sales to justify going all-out on development.

I probably shouldn't get my hopes up like that, though.---"An apostrophe does not mean 'uh-oh, here comes an s.'" - Dave Barry

The Paper Mario series started when we introduced RPG elements as a means of differentiating the game from the platformer series. Through the inclusion of this story and the characters we wrote to fit that story, we ended up giving the game a unique character. However, for Sticker Star, Mr Miyamoto asked us to create a game using only characters already found in the Mario world rather and not any of our own. So instead of focusing our attention on the storyor characters we focused instead on paper. We tried to add as many creative uses of paper as we could to the game. The theme of the game is stickers and we also put a lot of effort into this (including paperisation). Creating a world and story using only Mario characters meant for example we had to give each Toad a distinctive character even if they looked the same. So it was quite a challenge but I feel that we succeeded in overcoming it.

They definitely did do a great job making it all feel like paper, and there are a lot of little touches in here that I'd love to see come back in Paper Mario U. But like they said, there's no characters or story, and I have a really hard time getting past that. To me, that makes it not a Paper Mario game anymore. The lack of story and the not being an RPG (SPM was at least an action RPG) combine to make it feel like an unnecessary spinoff of a series that was already a spinoff.

I don't blame Intelligent Systems for anything here. They did a very good job making a good game within the restraints placed on them -- restraints under which no one could have made a Paper Mario as satisfying as TTYD. But I want to see them taken out of those restraints again very soon.---"An apostrophe does not mean 'uh-oh, here comes an s.'" - Dave Barry

You probably shouldn't use hyperbole like saying there is no story or character. They are there, and what is there is the same quality as the old stuff, it's just a lot more sparse than the other ones.---Polite conversation should never include Politics, Religion or what constitutes an RPG.

This is the first handheld Paper Mario game. It shouldn't HAVE continuity. Think of it as Paper Mario Land if it makes you feel better.

Why should I have to think of it as Paper Mario Land?

If that's what the developers were aiming for, why not just name the game Paper Mario Land?

Paper Mario has already established itself as a separate spinoff series which follows certain criteria; it has themes, concepts and certain stylistic aspects that separate it from the main series, and this game changes those, and I'm guessing those reasons are the reasons why so many people are unhappy with this game.

Spiritually, yes, it's the offspring of Paper Mario and Super Mario Land, but being called simply "Paper Mario [Sticker Star]" we expect certain things which were not present.

I feel like people don't get it.Its like if i go to a restaurant and order a steak but the waiter brings me fish instead.

I would have ordered fish if i wanted that. if i couldn't get my waiter to give me a steak i would probaly eat the fish anyways because i already payed for it anyways.

Hell even if a restaurant told me they were bringing me fish instead that wouldn't mean i couldn't be upset.

the point is that i had certain expectations and me being told i have to deal with it upsets me.

If i just sat there and ate the fish after asking for steak then how would the restaurant know what they did made me upset? and if i don't say anything then they will certainly keep doing it.

and really that's the big problem,if you don't point out people's mistakes they will never learn from them.---Jirachi is the best pokemon ppl who agree:3unless i state otherwise everything i say is MY opinion.

Your analogy works better if you replace "ask for the steak" with "ask for the diner mystery special" and getting something you didn't like. If you didn't know FOR A FACT you would like it, then you can't really complain because, while you asked for it, ultimately it was not up to you what you got at that point.

Besides, I can hardly see it being considered a mistake when it seems to me a LOT of people are actually enjoying this game. It's all a matter of opinion, and yours is simply appearing to be a minority at this point in the races.

This is the first handheld Paper Mario game. It shouldn't HAVE continuity. Think of it as Paper Mario Land if it makes you feel better.

Why should I have to think of it as Paper Mario Land?

If that's what the developers were aiming for, why not just name the game Paper Mario Land?

Paper Mario has already established itself as a separate spinoff series which follows certain criteria; it has themes, concepts and certain stylistic aspects that separate it from the main series, and this game changes those, and I'm guessing those reasons are the reasons why so many people are unhappy with this game.

Spiritually, yes, it's the offspring of Paper Mario and Super Mario Land, but being called simply "Paper Mario [Sticker Star]" we expect certain things which were not present.

Umm, you do realize that this is a spinoff, right? That's why they didn't put a number afterwards. If effect, they did the same thing as calling it Paper Mario Land.---Polite conversation should never include Politics, Religion or what constitutes an RPG.Playing a game for it's story is like watching porn for it's story.